this is life

I have had such a long strange day it feels like several in one. I went to take my mother to the train station, from there she boarded the train to the airport. In the mad rush of jumping on as the bell was ringing, I forgot to pass her bag and then the doors shut. I followed her on the next train.
On my way back to Paris I was leaving the climbing the stairs of the metro. Girls screamed, it sounded like a movie star had landed. Then, behind me, several people running on the stairs, mouths covered like they were all collectively vomiting. A woman shouting, "he killed himself, he jumped". And then the stunned faces of people who don't know what to do, rush to their next train or watch the body being dragged from the tracks. I come home to a box of roses, sent by my love, who doesn't let our anniversary pass without a million thoughtful jests.
I go to school to hear more about how helpless the funding is. The screening was so poor that there is no hope of getting department funding. I was never told this screening was a kind of funding test, but apparently I had the chance at some but now I don't. My assistant director thinks we should look for a production company to help us finish, but that seems impossible.
I teach English to my old-man student, he's going to retire in a few months. He wants to visit Australia this fall. He's been a waiter for 39 years, and he works at a fancy restaurant. Paul Hogan and Robert Redford have been there.
I somehow acquired 4 new private students this week, which is a blessing in a moment of financial distress, but it seems I'll never have time to work on my film.
I am reading the third diary of Anais Nin; though I never read the first two it seemed fair enough to jump right in. It is wonderful and I identify terribly with her (well, I'm only on page 88, so we'll see). I love how she is a starving artist with no time to write and always having to take care of a million other little things.
Tonight I went and saw "Babel" which was very good even if I had to struggle a bit with the French subtitles. It was wonderful to see a movie I actually really enjoyed. Brad Pitt was the film's biggest flaw, but aside from that it was compelling and gripping and human. And the loveliest part was leaving the theater, the doors open right onto the Quai, and it was suddenly foggy. Not thick San Francisco fog, but a good post-rain mist that just floated on top of the waterfront and made Paris completely perfect. Well, it was a perfect moment at the very least.

raining

I should be depressed- stuck in the rain in this unfurnished apartment without a toilet seat and with a half-finished floor and no time to write my script and no money in my bank account- but actually I'm feeling just fine. I think my perpetually optimism is often clouded by my perpetual cynicism, but one can feel both I suppose.

I am projecting the film for a group of students at my University in Paris on Saturday, unfinished as it may be, with unmixed sound, no color correction, and very rough titles, on a terrible quality film projector to boot. Still, it'll be the very first time I see the images bigger than a computer monitor, so that's something to get excited about.

sinking?

When one starts eating a dinner of canned tuna and canned corn standing over a kitchen sink with a plastic fork, one begins to feel that perhaps it is not too far to the days when someone else is guiding the fork towards my mouth....
I have to admit, things are not going fantastically. I have $8.95 (minus my 30,000 film school debt) in my bank account, am desperately trying to finish fixing up this apartment with no end in sight as I think I'm allegeric to the dust, feel too distracted to focus on my screenplay, have an unfinished film that I am scared to show to anyone, and am really annoyed that I liked the last New Yorker piece by Miranda July. I want to be able to say, why yes, I can do that, write good stories and direct indie features and get published in the New Yorker, but it really feels like I can barely figure out how to buy nails at a hardware store in Paris. My phone is not yet working and if I didn't have the internet I think I'd really be losing it alone in Paris on this chilly Saturday night.
Okay, one tiny bit of nice thoughts since I don't want to drag you down or worry my parents- I saw the documentarian Fred Wiseman at the cinemateque today, a rare opportunity to be sure. He spoke in French with a very similiar American accent and slightly broken French to my own, so I felt a little better. Maybe someday I can give an interview in French at the cinemateque. Honestly if I have to wait till I'm 70 that's okay with me too.